Between the covers

It's that time of year when all the gardens are flourishing with new life.  Don't have a garden?  Perhaps try putting your old comics (or textbooks?) in the window and get growing!

"Manga Farming" is a project by Tokyo-based artist Koshi Kawachi, and is on display at the Matsuzakaya department store in Nagoya.

The process is simple... stand a book on its end, sprinkle with seeds (radish, broccoli, basil...) and water.  Sprouts start to appear in days!  A great way to upcycle materials that would otherwise end up in a landfill or recycling centre...

Going bananas

Waste not...

This month Maclean's magazine exposed the horrific amount of food wasted every day around the world. In many cases more food is wasted than consumed.

"...58 per cent of all the carrots grown currently went in the trash. That is, Stuart says, “for every carrot you eat, you have paid for at least one more to be thrown away.” Lettuce is even worse: for every serving of fresh salad eaten [...] another two have been thrown away"

More than institutionalized, the practice of throwing out perfectly healthy, fresh food is often legislated:

"...bureaucrats [...] have cooked up laws to ensure that all EU citizens are eating fruit and veggies of the same shape and size. In 2008, one British wholesaler was forced to chuck 5,000 kiwis for being four grams lighter than the 62 gram cut-off—the equivalent of being one millimeter too thin..."

But we can't put all the blame on the bureaucrats, everyone from farmers to consumers are getting their hands dirty in this mess.

"...Torontonians generated 70 kg more waste per person last year than just 10 years ago. Indeed, from 1990 to 2005, we increased our municipal waste by 24 per cent, compared to the OECD average increase of just five per cent."

This waste is not limited to the fields, but plagues our streams as well:

"The European Commission estimates that 40 to 60 per cent of all fish caught by European fleets are thrown back to sea because they are too small, or the wrong species (Greenpeace puts the figure even higher, suggesting that 117 million of the 186 million fish caught in U.K. waters are tossed back to sea). [...] the amount of fish-based protein actually consumed amounts to just 10 per cent of the marine animals removed annually from the oceans..."

Not only are these practices painfully counter-intuitive to feeding the hundreds of millions of starving people (mostly women and children), the consequences are also looming for the rest of the world:

"Factory farms have become one of the biggest sources of pollution on the continent. So when we waste from the industrial food system, we are also wasting oil, releasing greenhouse gases, polluting waterways and hastening global warming. Even worse, many of the environmental costs of creating, then wasting, so much food—such as deforestation, water depletion and soil erosion—are being foisted on developing countries, where increasing amounts of cereals, grains and produce are being grown to sate the West’s growing appetite. When we pay Brazil to chop down the rainforest to grow soy, or have Kenya drain the Tana River delta to make sugar, we of course also hasten the never-ending extension of the agricultural frontier into the world’s last, remaining forests and wetlands."

The added linkage is my own. You can read the entire original article here, or in the reading corner of our library. Get angry, get active!

Want not...

The silver lining in this dark cloud came when I found this article today in the Hamilton Spectator. The Ontario Christian Gleaners are an inspired and motivated organization, just down the road from us. They take some of this perfectly good, but unwanted food, and divert it from the dump.
Their over 150 hardworking volunteers process 9,000kg of food each week into dried snacks and soup mixes which is then donated to relief organizations and distributed around the world. Find out how by watching this video.
The operation costs $150,000 and runs entirely on donations. If you're looking for a place to channel you energy after reading the Maclean's article, this is a great place to start. Your time, money and food can help them keep up the good work.

Want to learn more? The Gleaners are hosting open houses tomorrow (Dec 2) and Monday Dec 7th at 10:30am.

Livin' la vida local

This season, the library staff are challenging ourselves to eat only (or mostly) local foods. Largely inspired by the 100-Mile Diet, we each have our own goals, rules and reasons for doing this.

We will be promoting local eating throughout the summer in various ways. Drop in to the library now to check out our display of student theses, library books and DVDs, and Eat Fresh Eat Local maps you can take home. We are also compiling a binder full of maps, articles, farms, CSAs, stores, restaurants and recipes. We are perfectly situated here to make the most of what's grown and raised in Ontario...and don't forget the school's own Community Garden, where you can adopt your own plot to get growing!

Try challenging yourself to eat locally this summer. It doesn't have to be 100%, start with one meal, check out the farmer's markets, sign up with a CSA. There are countless reasons to eat locally: the health of our environment, our own health, the consequences of peak oil and just getting to know your food - who makes it and where it comes from.

Keep an eye on our Eat Local blog for tips, tricks, events, ideas, sources and more!

Room to Grow

Want to grow your own food, but don't have the space? Have space to grow food, but don't have the time or the energy? Sign up on Sharing Backyards! This site matches people who want to grow with people who have room to grow...it's like online dating for local food lovers.

Can't find a backyard to use? Don't discount those forgotten corners of your city...there's always room to grow!

Unfortunately, Waterloo Region has just voted against allowing chickens to be raised in residential backyards, so you'll have to stick to plants.

Don't have space, time, energy or know-how? Let someone else do the growing for you. Support one of your MANY local food growers by visiting the Farmer's Market, a local farm, or buying into a CSA co-op.

Free floating

Online mag FLYP features Belgian architect Vincent Callebaut's idea for a new kind of island getaway. It is expected that global warming, and the resulting rise in sea levels, will create hundreds of millions of refugees. Callebaut's solution to this devastating problem are self-sufficient, amphibious cities called "lilypad".

A little (fish) food for thought...

To learn more about this looming crisis, and how it is already affecting millions of people around the world, check out the documentary "The Refugees of the Blue Planet" available in our film collection.

Geo-abstract

They say art imitates life. This exhibition by the University of Waterloo's Map Library proves that life IS art

Geo-Abstract

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

Exhibit runs Monday September 15th ro Friday Spetember 19th at the Modern Languages Gallery, University of Waterloo

Want to know more about how YOU can make maps like these? Ask me!

Books in the Spotlight

Check out these books featured in this month's spotlight. And don't forget to visit the library for even more fresh titles!

Let's get on the same page!

This year's choice for Waterloo Region's 'One Book, One Community' is...

The 100-mile Diet: A year of eating locally
by Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon

The book chronicles their year of strictly eating only the foods that came from within a 100-mile radius of their home in Vancouver. You can now find this book in our collection (call# TX 360 .C22 B74x 2007a).

While you're at it, come and check out our multi-media display of related materials, from books to DVDs, local articles and the Waterloo and Hamilton Buy Local, Buy Fresh maps!

In a time of global warming, food riots and rising gas prices, growing your own food or buying locally is a great way to start building sustainable communities. It's summer and we live in Southern Ontario...fresh and local food abounds! While it may be hard to give up on things like rice, olive oil, coffee or chocolate, it's easy to make up the rest of your diet with food that is only a short walk away. Try eating locally for a weekend, go a month without buying processed foods, walk over the Farmer's Market every Saturday morning, grow some tomatoes in your window. Eating fresh and locally will benefit your health AND the planet's. I challenge you!

Wondering what 100 miles means to you here in Cambridge? Have a look...

...want to know how I made that map? Interested in finding out what kinds of maps YOU can make? Ask me!

New Books - on what's natural...

Blubberland: The Dangers of Happiness

Elizabeth Farrelly

BF 575.H27F37 2008

Welcome to Blubberland – a world of quadrangle-garaged mansions, vast malls, gated communities, stretch limos, and posh resorts. Blubberland is a place, but it is also a state of mind: we expect to be happy [trophy house, SUV in the driveway, home entertainment system, pension fund, cosmetic surgery], but in fact we’ve grown increasingly bloated, bored, and miserable.

In Blubberland, award-winning critic Elizabeth Farrelly looks at our “superfluous superfluity,” our huge eco-footprint, and asks why we find it so hard to abandon habits we know to be destructive. Why can’t we build human-scale cities, design meaningful public spaces, eat reasonable meals, and stop assaulting nature. 

Nature Design: From Inspiration to Innovation 

N7650 .M386x 2007 

Nature has always been a source of inspiration for the design of the human environment, but in recent years this relationship has grown even more intense, being revealed in a broad spectrum of forms and functions. This book presents complex and innovative projects and objects from design, architecture, landscape architecture, photography, and art that have been inspired by nature. Themes include: sea, topography, plants, human beings, animals, scent, and climate. Watch how 1^st Ave Machine has inserted artificial natural elements into real nature to create an eye-popping music video

Biophilic Design 

Stephen R. Kellert, Judith H. Heerwagen, Martin L. Mador 

NA2542.35.B56 2008

Biophilic design is about humanity’s place in nature and the natural world’s place in human society, where mutuality, respect, and enriching relationships can and should exist at all levels and should emerge as the norm rather than the exception. Incorporating the positive experience of nature into the design of the built environment is critical to human health, performance, and well-being.  Learn more about the theory, science, and practice of biophilic design through this guide.

Sustainable Urbanism: Urban Design With Nature

Douglas Farr

HT241.S8736 2008 

Written by the chair of the LEED-Neighborhood Development (LEED-ND) initiative, this book is both an urgent call to action and a comprehensive introduction to "Sustainable Urbanism" - the emerging and growing design reform movement that combines the creation and enhancement of walkable and diverse places with the need to build high-performance infrastructure and buildings. Farr shows where we went wrong and how we need to implement Sustainable Urbanism through leadership and communication in cities, communities, and neighborhoods.

...because I felt like it...

Well, it's the end of term and the beginning of spring. It's actually the end and the beginning of many things. So I felt like blogging a little more casual than usual. I spent last night painstakingly typing out this poem. I really hope someone takes the time to read it...Please feel free to let me know if you did!

I've always liked this poem. And for many reasons it seems to be particularly appropriate in this moment of time.

The land has a very loud voice in Canadian literature. It's almost as if Purdy's poems are written from the land's point of view. I know the land Purdy is writing about in this poem very well; many parts of it have flooded this week. A friend of mine who grew up in a similar part of Ontario has chosen to return to a life of farming. He recommend I read Fields of Plenty by Michael Ableman, and I did. I recommend it to you too...we have it in our library system (call # S 605.5 .A249 2005).

I've noticed that many of our Masters students are studying agriculture and agricultural land. In a climate of environmental desperation, health crises and food prices causing riots around the world, it is reassuring to know a new generation sees the need for local and sustainable food sources and community building.

Enjoy.

The Country North of Belleville

by Al Purdy

Bush land scrub land -
Cashel Township and Wollaston
Elzevir McClure and Dungannon
green lands of Weslemkoon Lake
where a man might have some
opinion of what beauty
is and none deny him
for miles ---

Yet this is the country of defeat
where Sisyphus rolls a big stone
year after year up the ancient hills
picknicking glaciers have left strewn
with centuries' rubble
backbreaking days
in the sun and rain
when realization seeps slow in the mind
without grandeur or self deception in
noble struggle
of being a fool --

A country of quiescence and still distance
a lean land
not like the fat south
with inches of black soil on
earth's round belly --
And where the farms are
it's as if a man stuck
both thumbs in the in the stony earth and pulled
it apart
to make room
enough between the trees
for a wife
and maybe some cows and
room for some
of the more easily kept illusions --
And where the farms have gone back
to forest
are only soft outlines
shadowy differences --

Old fences drift vaguely among the trees
a pile of moss-covered stones
gathered for some ghost purpose
has lost meaning under the meaningless sky
--- they are like cities under water
and the undulating green waves of time
are laid on them --

This is the country of our defeat
and yet
during the fall plowing a man
might stop and stand in a brown valley of the furrows
and shade his eyes to watch for the same
red patch mixed with gold
that appears on the same
spot in the hills
year after year
and grow old
plowing and plowing a ten-acre field until
the convolutions run parallel with his own brain ---

And this is a country where the young
leave quickly
unwilling to know what their fathers know
or think the words their mothers do not say --
Herschel Monteagle and Faraday
lakeland rockland and hill country
a little adjacent to where the world is
a little north of where the cities are and
sometime
we may go back there
to the country of our defeat

Wollaston Elzevir and Dungannon
and Weslemkoon lake land
where the high townships of Cashel
McClure and Marmora once were ---
But it's been a long time since
and we must enquire the way
of strangers --